Do you think users should be informed of such a major change in one of the most used features of Photoshop?This wastes time in retraining muscle memory for millions of users, and by the looks of things, you've failed to provide an easy way to turn this off.It is baffling when these kinds of decisions are made.

It's also inconsistent! I worked out quickly that constrained was the new default - sure, I'm ok with that as it is an attempt to standardize across apps - but then I go to resize something else and it requires the old key combo?!! Is there a bug where old documents or elements from old documents retain the old restraining defaults?! It's the only explanation I could come up with...

The consensus in time will show this was a mistake by the development team. If it were thought out and there was a good reason to change it then it would have been changed for other similar functions like scaling a crop, tool constraints, rotation etc. My bet is that they will reverse this by making it a preference to save face.

Thanks Tracy. Yes John McAssey's manual fix works. But the PS team needs to hear us because a change can affect productivity across the whole PS user community effectively creating a massive loss of productivity worldwide. I know they understand this very well and take these things seriously.

You just made my month!! A friend dropped a drink on my laptop so I had to get a new one and then after getting my computer all setup my Adobe apps were all reset so it has been a nightmare!!! One minute I can't get shift to constrain, the next I can't get it to stop. Hallelujah for you!!

Also, why on earth did they not send a notification in the product to tell us this?! ;)

@david tristram New feature ?!? Its not a feature, its a change. and its not change all across the program, shapes scale like before. Smart objects scale like before. Its just confusing an inconsitent. If you are going to force such a shortcut change on the users, at least do it on everything.

I have been using Photoshop professionally since it first came out. That is a very long time to get used to doing something. Much longer than 10 years. I can understand defaulting it to being constrained, but couldn't you come up with another button to unconstrain other than the one everyone is used to using for constrain!! OMG. That is just absolutely stupid and short-sighted UX and product design. C'mon, you can do better than that. Worse yet -- I have to come to this forum to figure out the change!! Very poorly considered.

If there was a Setup Assistant that ran on first launch and allowed a user to toggle these changes, this wouldn't be an issue. But changing defaults silently and letting users find them and be pissed off is just poor software design.

If there was a Setup Assistant that ran on first launch and allowed a user to toggle these changes, this wouldn't be an issue. But changing defaults silently and letting users find them and be pissed off is just poor software design.

I've been using Photoshop professionally since Photoshop 2.Most of the time, updates had value and few if any were just plain unnecessary.Changing how a selected layer is constrained has no apparent value.Did it bring value to something else in the program? Probably not!Two weeks ago David Tristram, an Adobe employee, wrote the following:"new feature, use Shift to *un* constrain. Constrain to fixed aspect is now on by default"What he wrote could be easily interpreted as:You guys are all stupid and I am the Photoshop God. Therefore, we made this change and you will have to get used to it! Just imagine how nice it would have been if he had written a great explanation as to why this change was made!

Yes, I agree with you Dennis. I would also like to know if the difference between scaling text layers, smart layers, shapes and regular layers were intentional. If so I would very much like to know the exact reason for this and what Adobe think it will help solving?!?

To me, I still sit with a question mark above my head of exactly what Photoshop CC 2019 brought to the table that has made it a better than it was. Multiple Undos - all ready there (just forced changed the shortcut on us). Uniform scale was all ready there (just forced changed the shortcut). Color wheel is nice but too little and too late - we all ready got way better plugins for that. and any optimizations made to the program, I really cannot notice, in fact for me everything is just slightly more laggy (layers in particular). If the adobe team need ideas on where to continue the development they should announce that...or was this just a good way to save a few bucks this year?

They say it's to make it uniform to iPad (or something I never had anything to do with) were are no shift keys, or they are something unusual. So becuase everything must be the same in scope of their produtcs they choose probably to make workstation versions work same as those shortly many people will use mostly, new young comers that are future target for Adobe. We can't do anything (however I don't like it) that the generation of old users remembering first releases or those at least from 6 - 7 years shortly is going to die and not be profitable for this company. It's even easier to play with kids for them by those new unfinished updates than with 'real' users as younger ones are going to adapt that somehow faster using their flexible brains and not complain as we do.

They act like Europe Union that introduces plenty of unthought and unresonable stupid changes to old as world good working natural regulations. Of course they know what they do. So no matter they have no logic answer for that - as far as they can say people what to do they are going to use it to 'enslave' them, rule the world and have more money, managing those they not belong to them.

(...)what Photoshop CC 2019 brought to the table that has made it a better than it was.

New users are not aware of this stupidly made action. So answer is there's really nothing that could be reason to release new Photoshop that couldn't be next update to previous one. The only what is important user who looks for such product is more likely buy something that is fresh as that must be better. Will anyone take a time to investigate what's true? Probably more time people spend on learning new stuff with no experience of how that was earlier. An when such user is going finally to be familiar with something that is initially too hard to look at as a whole there will pass more years before they start to discredit anything, that when beeing able to recognise something has no sense in Adobe doings, like for example now some of another controversial updates.

Well, another disappointing response from Adobe. IMHO you are absolute morons for changing something that been one way for EVER. Clearly you don't have any understanding of how your users work and need to work. We've got work to do and we expect our tools to continue working the way they always have — or you better have one hell of a good reason for changing something. And that's one of the problems with Adobe: you make changes but why are you making the changes? What is the compelling reason? I hope you finally do something so stupid that it causes a huge financial impact to the company because you need a darn good whopping.

It’s very tempting to get by on an old paid for in full version and cancel my subscription. I already shut down the 2019 version and went back to 2018. The problem is, if Adobe refuses to give us back our old options we are stuck with this crap from here on out, and I for one am not going to upgrade just because there is no other choice for newer versions. It’s not just new tool behavior for me though. I found far too many bugs in the 2019 version and it’s just not worth the headache

Great advice, except text layers behave differently now to smart objects, or rasterised layers. Also, for some reason the layer labels for smart objects and shapes no longer work, so you can't scan through a document to see what is what! 0/10 rolling back to previous version.

This is a terrible change. I have to relearn a 20+ year reflex for Photoshop only?! ID and AI stay as they were? For what purpose exactly? Does Adobe have any idea how disorienting this is for experienced users? Like so often with Adobe CC, it's back to last year's version or the version before that. I'm surprised holding down Shift doesn't also pop up an ad for Adobe Stock.

This is a terrible change. I have to relearn a 20+ year reflex for Photoshop only?! ID and AI stay as they were? For what purpose exactly? Does Adobe have any idea how disorienting this is for experienced users? Like so often with Adobe CC, it's back to last year's version or the version before that. I'm surprised holding down Shift doesn't also pop up an ad for Adobe Stock.

I guess InDesign and Illustrator are used mostly by professional users while Photoshop is popular amongst amateurs, so people who do fast fun corrections on other devices they can do in Ps too. Now this app is dedicated to them, especially iPad users, where ID and AI versions don't exist on?

If Photoshop was the only Adobe CC product I used, I’d grit my teeth and get used to the new way of resizing. However, I spend all day jumping from Illustrator to Photoshop to Indesign and back again (and again) — and the other two programs didn’t change. So I am constantly doing it wrong. It’s beyond frustrating.

* Transform Illustrator Indesign Photoshop.* I wonder. What happens if you trans for a pixel shape and a vector shape simultaneously.* I've got the feeling this 'feature' has been implemented so PS is easier to use on an Ipad. But professionals don't work directly on Tablets.

This update is one of the dumbest things I can imagine. Why not just start randomly changing hotkeys, too? why not switch it so (e) selects the brush and (b) selects the eraser? This was not a problem, and does not need to be fixed. Kindly change it back so I can regain my faith in Adobe. This was a very careless and stupid change.

I was waiting for that modification since a long time...This change (No using shift as default for constraint), make more sense for me and it become as most of other software do.It will be nice do, if the default setting(not using shift for constraint) was the same for "Vector''.

I have worked in Photoshop longer than almost everyone. I started with PS3 beta release and have been a professional user ever since. In the 90's I beta tested quite often. In all that time, I have to say this is the dumbest idea ever. At least have a simple selection to turn it off. PS The chain link is supposed to turn it on and off, but Adobe didn't bother to make it actually work. Click it and see. It does nothing but change selection color. I just need a product that works. All these useless updates with tools for the ignorant masses has made PS a shadow of what really made it great. Ask someone who started using PS in 1993.

I started in Photoshop 2.5 before it had layers and I’d say that while the application isn’t perfect, it is close to brilliant.

The change in the bahavior for Free Transorm is out of character flr Adobe. How long time users use the product is often well considered. Maybe it’s new people on the team? I am sure that the feedback is being heard and that we’ll have something in the preferences for this and it working as expected as set by the user.

I am still doing the bulk of my work in version 19 (CC2018),b but I typically hold off three to four months before mograting to major releases. Proir to the subscription model, I always held off until the .1 or .5 version shipped.

If anything, I jump up to 2019 for the content-aware fill improvments and then jump back to 2018 (both open at the same time). That’s certainly not ideal.

Also, basic math in the value text fields is almost worth all the other hassles. (Almost.)

This is sooooooo annoying Adobe. I have been using Photoshop for 19 years.... and now you change the 'shift' key around. Give is the option to change it back please so we can just get on with our work.....

It's a stupid unfair move. Adobe updated 20.0.1 and in that update they didn't even bother to look at the transform tool.

I'm beginning to think that Adobe is going to ignore the complaints in this forum about the scaling behaviour.

I'm hoping that more of our friends add their woes about the transform tool here and vote by clicking 'ME TOO' on top of this page. Hopefully Adobe will get the message that we want to go back to the existing behaviour of the transform tool that was in Photoshop V19.

Spread the word so that Adobe gets the message.

I refuse to use the buggy Photoshop V20. I wasted so much valuable time and expense trialling the new version and it's not worth it to me to keep using V20

So as of now there are ninety, count 'em, metoos tallied at the top of this page. Does anyone really think that Adobe pays any attention at all to this, not even a zygote of a blip on their radar. They simply don't care and go on collecting our monthly due. They care about one thing and one thing only. That should be readily apparent at this point.

I am a little disheartened by Adobe's lack of response for the discontent over this feature that no one wanted. If Adobe is going to change a core behavior and say it's for user experience or consistency, then why are you forcing long-time users to edit a buried preferences file and why are none of the other Adobe apps the same. At the very least, please make it an option in the Photoshop preferences. This was not a cool move for people who use Photoshop every day.

The problem is that the soon to be released Photoshop for iPad has the same underlying code as the desktop Photoshop. I think that's really what's going on.

Adobe is not going to listen to us.

I read online 'The Verge' which reported that "Bringing a program like Photoshop to the iPad is a monumental task. The project started 18 months ago when two Adobe engineers asked to carve out time to bring the Photoshop codebase to the iPad. “There was just a lot of doubt until what we call the “proof of life” moment,” says Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer. Senior director Pam Clark agrees: “We fully admit we were surprised when the engineers showed up, and it was quite powerful and smooth.” That “proof of life” product inspired the design team to start focusing on the app’s user experience, with each new build focusing on a different Photoshop workflow."

As a Photoshop user since V3, I would venture to say Adobe's mindset started when they purchased Aldus Photostyler and thus eliminating their real competition. Monopolies always choose to do what they want as opposed to serving their loyal client base.

Adobe has no real competition so they do as they please without regard to their clients. Adobe of late has been making more changes that hurt professional users and woo novices.

Adobe, I plead with you to LEAVE THE BASIC OPERATION OF PHOTOSHOP ALONE! Make your product perform better and give us a way in the prefs to "opt out" of any major changes. Change all you want in Photoshop Elements for the novices and kids. If you want Photoshop for the iPad... call it Photoshop iPad, making it a separate application. You are in the process of screwing yourself royally and don't seem to realize it. Listen to your professional users. They pay your salaries.

Take what I say with a grain of salt, since I only got Affinity for iPad yesterday. But when I watched a tutorial on gestures, my head started swimming. It looks like they use the same concept there—no gesture (shift) for constrain transform, gesture to unconstrain—﻿but﻿ it also appears to be inconsistent. It looked to me like shapes (vector) were different with free transform using no gesture. They came out a long time ago, so maybe PS is copying them?

It's going to be a confusing world out there. I still want the option to constrain or not on the Options bar, so if we click on the link, it's constrained AND a sticky setting. Unlinked, unconstrained, AND a sticky setting. We can have a preference, too, but the Options bar lets us choose on the fly. As for the iPad, I'll probably click my way through it all, ignoring gestures as much as I possibly can, and hope menus and icons work as well on the iPad as they do on the desktop for apps where I don't remember all the shortcuts. It's not as if I'm using the iPad to be highly productive.

This happens in Adobe tools all the time, and I hate it. They turned off CSS custom formatting in Dreamweaver a few years ago when they started using a different framework to power it... a huge amount of users wanted it back and nothing happened. I gave up WYSIWYG editors completely and moved to Notepad++, and am sort of leaning the same way with this one. We'll see.

If Adobe has screwed up Photoshop so bad in favor of the upcoming Photoshop for IPad like so many of us think, the issue is that the ‘Real’ Photoshop for iPad isn’t ‘Real’. To completely change the behavior of basic tools that we have used for years rather than to develop a ‘Real’ version of Photoshop for iPad is not accomplishing a quality product for either version. As bad as I may want to use Photoshop on my iPad, I would rather mirror my iPad to my Mac to use for a drawing pad. I still see that the new version of Photoshop is too full of bugs and other bad behaviors that I’m not likely to ever use anything later than the 2018 version.

I don't understand why the link-unlink button is still up there in the toolbar with the transform commands and sizes. clicnk the link and unlink constraints/ proportions button now makes me feel stupid because it doesn't make a difference. Only pressing shift does.

I hate this new feature. I've used Shift+drag to constrain proportion on an object for 20 years and it's habit. And every other program sill requires you to hold shift to constrain. Change it back Photoshop, and let the people who like this new feature can enable it.

Apple introduced natural scroll in touchpad but provided an option to switch to classic scroll. That’s how you introduce new conventions. People are used to shift key transform and for some it’s hard and unnecessary to break the habit. Like mine. I feel like I am forced to like the opinion of UX designers at Adobe.

So what is happening with this ? ... what is it ... 3 months now and it is still annoying the utter s**t out of me. I use photoshop all day, everyday, for work plus 2 other businesses. This is the WORST change in the history of Adobe.

Adobe, You have no problem increasing the subscription rate for CC, only to change a standard part of the workflow in Photoshop. And you call it a feature? I can still constrain in Illustrator and InDesign. What if a car maker charged a couple of thousand more for their auto and told you they had a new "feature" where if you turn the steering wheel left, the car turned right? Or more accurately, "we have a new feature, we switched the gas and brake pedals"

Hyperbolic....but actually, it might just be right. I can't really think of a worse one. Not the idea itself, which is is inherently sound (most times users want to maintain aspect ratio, so why indeed should that take an extra step for the user?) But the implementation is just awful.

At the near-certain risk of repeating things that have been already said repeatedly on this thread and others:

-This would have been a great idea back in 1993. In 2018, where it's contending with years or decades of muscle memory for the vast majority of users, it's an uphill battle at best.

-At least make it consistent within the same program, for God's sake! Transforming a vector layer in Photoshop now works the exact reverse of transforming a raster layer in Photoshop. How could anything good possibly come of that?

-it seems a no-brainer to implement an option for those who want to revert it. You've supplied legacy options for much less controversial features like the new and improved Brightness & Contrast setting - why not for this one?

I'd like to voice that I too would love for this behavior to go back to the way it was before. I don't mind adjusting my habits with new updates especially if they create an improvement in workflow. This update would probably be an improvement for me if the other design programs that I use regularly (Illustrator & InDesign) had a similar feature. But, since I still have to hold the shift key for contrained proportions on those programs, it's very hard to change that habit in Photoshop only. I say change them all to have that behavior or leave PS as is. That's my request for future updates. Thanks!

This change is driving me nuts too, especially since it's not the same in Illustrator. Over the years I've been annoyed by inconsistencies between the Photoshop and Illustrator keyboard controls, but this is the worst yet.Don't the Photoshop and Illustrator teams talk to each other?

Unbelievable! I recently updated my photoshop and have been completely frustrated with this. Why change something that's been the same for decades?? It's really slowing down my workflow. I'm sure as soon as I get used to this they will change it back. Also, with the crop tool why is the default containing the entire image and not a free crop? Make no sense at all. I shouldn't have to hold shift to do a simple crop. David is right about the muscle memory, I'm completely thrown off. Please put these back to normal. Free transform and all the subcategories as well as the crop tool. Oh and why does the zoom tool in camera raw keep changing and why would it be different than the zoom in photoshop? Get it together guys!! Don't change things just to change them...I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

For gods sake learn your lesson - YOU CANNOT CHANGE DEFAULT BEHAVIOR LIKE THIS !!! It is NEVER EVER ACCEPTABLE nor desirable. Another one of those stupid "improvements" that everybody hates and Adobe has to roll back. Who the f ... signs off on these things? Insane. Could we PLEASE get through 2019 without anymore of this "improvement" crap ?

THANK YOU. It's been 24 hours of torture. HOW does a major universal industry application like Photoshop arbitrarily reverse a SHIFT key functionality like that. Holy smokes. It was COMPLETELY changing my workflow last night. 15 years ... then overnight... mandatory functionality switch???

At least the undo is consistent with other apps behavior. The Scale behavior is now totally different than other apps, when going back and forth all day from PSD to Illust to Indesign I keep hoping they will be more alike.

@Ori don't try to get used to it. It's like getting used to reverse driving! It should be all case sensitive so write it exactly as above... Maybe you installed PS / CC for all users? I believe then you need another user folder, right?

THANK YOU for your post to disable the idiotic change sans legacy pref.

​On Macintosh High Sierra 10.13.6, ​I did exactly as you detailed (copy/pasting the command, so it's case sensitive; checking for invisibles, none except the single space; etc.)

~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 Settings/PSUserConfig.txt=> TransformProportionalScale 0​Quit/restart PS and no change.​​Any further wisdom to fix this maddening new behavior?​

###

OK, answering my own question. It took another hour of experimenting (locations, permissions, text file encoding, etc.), but HERE'S THE FIX (for Mac Users): the text file must be saved as a Unicode UTF-8 file.

If it's a UTF-16 file (a more current version which some text editors default to), it won't work.

And, it even supports comments if your start a line with a hashtag (eg, # Revert idiotic removal of shift key for proportional constraint changes by Adobe in PS CC 2019).

...Thanks to our PS internet village for sharing the wisdom. Fingers crossed that before changing a highly used function that is built into the muscle memory of tens (hundreds?) of thousands of experienced users, Adobe will include it as a Preferences checkbox!

It's definitely hundreds of thousands. I spent ten minutes trying to scale an icon and searching the web until I figured out they reversed the behavior. It's like taking every Xbox controller and deciding that "reversed" is the new standard.

We shouldn't have to do this. This is Adobe's responsibility. We don't get paid the big bucks to code Adobe software. Come on Adobe engineers, listen to us, your long term loyal users. . . . Then again why would you Adobe, when you probably get thousands of 'new' customers a week, who wouldn't know about the dramas we 'old school' had to put up with your buggy software. I guess our threats of abandoning your product wouldn't worry you in the least.

Maybe something will be chnaged for better. I see there are other popular topics from past with many likes however noticably less than this one. They had no any impact though, but maybe now there is little more chance for some kind of reversion:

You have made absolutely certain you're in the ﻿user﻿ Library, and not the Macintosh HD Library? Oh, I forgot. Apple tries to hide this from us. I've unhidden it. You can use Go> Library and it will take you directly to the user Library.

Since Adobe never announces its modifying a feature, we won't know if they'll do something to make this more user friendly or not— until they do it or don't. '-}

I was using Procreate on my iPad with layers of images today—I've only recently begun to use it—and when you click on the Arrow that brings up the Transform and Move/Flip, etc., controls, by default Procreate sets the controls to free transform. It wasn't exactly sticky, either, so here I've trained myself that mobile apps use constrained transform by default, PS uses constrained transform by default, and now I was constantly resizing an image only to have it distort—same problem I'm having in Illustrator.<sigh> In Procreate I had to keep remembering to look at the controls, rather than simply start transforming on the document.

This is truly a mess across all the apps and desktop programs. Anyway, Procreate has been around a donkey's age, too, on mobile devices, so defaults are obviously anything the app designers want them to be. If there's some standards consortium that they're all moving towards, I haven't seen the results yet with the apps I have.

2. In the Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder... to open the Go to Folder window.

3. With the text field in the Go to Folder window active, choose Edit > Paste and then click Go.

Alternatives:• In the Finder, hold the Option key when choosing the Go pulldown menu to show the User's Library folder in the Go menu list.• In the Finder, go to Help > Search and enter "Library" and then hover your mouse of the results "Menu Items: Library". A large blue arrow will reveal the User's Library folder.

To be candid, this solution is not acceptable. We pay a lot of money every year to use this software. We shouldn't have to go writing & moving config files around our system folders. At the least, this should be a checkbox option somewhere in preferences or in the UI.

Although that is a pretty specious argument since Adobe can give us anything, including installation instructions, and we're not "reverse engineering," nor decompiling. We're allowed to add and delete as much as we want—that's the purpose of scripts, plug-ins, extensions, and the ability to write our own. Their own folders and files are not protected against us deleting them, either, thus altering the app often considerably, sometimes to benefit under their own instructions.

Unless Adobe provides it, of course, it doesn't come with any guarantee of working and not killing the app. . . Of course, IF Adobe provides it, the only guarantee is that they'll get around to fixing problems in the order of magnitude that they consider them to fall under. '-}

Adobe just HAD to be different, so they made it that you had to hold in Shift to constrain. Just about all other apps auto constrained and scaled based on the selection handle you scaled with. So all people started adopting Adobe's change... Now they introduce it as a "New Feature" instead of saying - sorry we messed up all these years.

One thing I am starting to be more aware of it when you click too far out of the transform bounding box, it stamps the change. It was only today that I realize I hate this after wanting to select all to rotate the entire image slightly.

Even if it's a tiny effort to have the cursor closer, these little things add up and are just annoying.

Mark - Fully agree. There are many times where you WANT to move your cursor farther away from the corner to make very minute changes, and now if you go too far, bam, you've committed the transform. So far I have yet to see, although I may have missed it, any kind of mea culpa from Adobe saying that they indeed, did eff it up and will have a fix shortly. In the meantime, the text file works fine but does not increase the safe zone around the frame during a (not so) Free Transform.

It used to be that to maintain proportional scaling, a user would hold the shift key while scaling. In Photoshop CC 2019 the proportional scaling is done without pushing anything, but now when you hold the Shift key it UNLOCKS proportional scaling.

To just change the scale tool to be backwards relative to how it has very literally always been without an easy way to change it back or any documentation the first time you use Photoshop CC 2019 is ridiculous. It shows that the people making the software don't actually use the software.

The fix is easy: Instead of making some one line script file, have an in-app toggle switch to allow for legacy scaling proportional.

I've been using Photoshop for 25 years, and this is absolutely 100% perplexing.

You're supposed to just "know" that you should click on the What's New below the app name to get to a page that tells you what's new.

But I do see a couple of significant usability issues. For one thing, the What's New is hardly prominent. It could be so it acted more like a warning than marketing, just in case you were interested.

For another, when I look at the page, the whole new Transform and Auto-commit is under the heading "Usability Improvements." Way to be so boring and technical on that page, no one reads it. The headers, imo, should be the ﻿feature names﻿ to direct our attention, not "Usability," or "Top Customer Requests." They could even use heads and subheads so they could put Usability Improvements underneath Transform and Auto-Commit. Subheads were invented a while ago, I believe.

But it's not as if they don't tell us—they just do it very quietly. '-}

Finding a "fix," since there wasn't officially a hack to "fix" transform, isn't the same issue as " users have had to trawl through forums to find out how to use a tool thats worked perfectly well in one way for years. . . " You didn't have to trawl to find out ﻿how ﻿ it worked, only notice that there was a central location for finding out what was new before you went any further. You may think that reading the What's New page just makes you frustrated in advance. I prefer to know in advance what to look out for and test —before I make up my mind that it's a good idea or a terrible idea.

And I do think that better headers, like having a good index (which we don't have for the online guide), helps people quickly find what interests them. Getting their attention is half the battle in good design.

But yes, to fix Transform—since they didn't intend for us to choose to go back or they'd have given us a legacy setting—you do have to search hard, and in fact, had to wait for someone to supply it. Not that I think it's a genuine "fix" if you have to hack code to do it. <g>

From a practical point this change makes sense... I teach new students and holding shift while constraining is just not natural because every app they use outside of Photoshop doesn't require holding shift.

BUT... The way Adobe implimented this shows their attitude and that they really couldn't care about existing users. They already have our money. They are only interested in getting new clients.

Mostly I see people say other applications also use 'shift' as modifier that let keep proportions, and that I noticed it's true. Can you say names of those other application that is different? Normally it's like in was till now, but even if different then for sure not that all other applications had that way to do it, not even half of them.

"Simple apps" like Powerpoint, Word etc don't use shift - just drag a corner and it keeps proportions. CorelDRAW / PhotoPaint also keeps proportions when using the corner handles. (Well used to when I used it before Adobe)

I think we were using shift back in the Quark Xpress days, also a lot of audio software, cad software, any program even using shift select - multiple selections are rarely made by default. In general shift is a function that skips manual steps or loose movement ie. constrain.

No I mean that things like drag in a straight line, select multiple objects, rotate to angles - these kind of functions are rarely done by default in most software I've used.

Shift is widely know as a constrain or multiple selection function. It is a convention. Open up a folder in Windows and click on several items in a list. Would you want to multiply select without shift.

I'm not arguing, I am only discussing this in principle - as it could be a slippery slope.

Now I understand. I have the same opinion. The example with selecting multiple files with no 'shift' was one of better I heard :D Such simplicity would kill the logic why modifier keys even exist. They are support for additional operations. If we revert it we're going to 'lose' time not on holding them, but thinking whether we should do that for certain action as now I see some operations need them while others inconsistently don't.

Bug. Maintain aspect ratio constrain link on the toolbar does not work in cc 2019.* Need to look at this bug also with the constrain link -

When you un-check the Maintain aspect ratio constrain link on the toolbar and then use transform it still maintains aspect ratio. . . un-checking the link should disable maintain aspect ratio shouldn't it? Well it doesn't.

Also shift key + transform disables Maintain aspect ratio but doesn't correspond with the constrain link on the tool bar.

I think we can all agree that there should be a preference toggle and the "Maintain aspect ratio" constrain link on the toolbar should function properly. Additionally, a popup blocker to notify users of these changes to default behavior and a checkbox in that dialog to set the preference is a MUST HAVE for future changes like this (and the "auto-select" feature of the move tool).

That said, the decision to flip the default behavior is not a bug. It's an inconvenience to retrain habits, but I know that I and a lot of others transform with constraints on far more (like, 90% of the time for me) than not, so for us, this is a workflow improvement. I will be not have to be constantly holding shift with my pinkey finger! Thanks Adobe!

Let's ask for a preference setting, fix the aspect-ratio button in the tool bar, and cut down on the "I can't believe..."s and "How could they..."s.

Will there be some initial frustration when we hold shift and the transform box goes all wobbly? Sure. What's the solution? Let go of the shift key. There are more disruptive and destructive bugs and changes that we can focus on.

Sorry -- I disagree. By those standards there is no such thing as designing a product for your existing users. No existing user is helped by changing an easy, learned and automatic behavior. It's like re-arranging the keys on a piano. Middle C is one key to the right now! So much more convenient! Thank you piano tuner for forcing me to re-learn my craft! If you want to default the constraint on, that's fine. Just don't use the traditional "constrain" key to unconstrain!

Do you reply for Max Johnson or mine comment? If mine the best for me would be like that was so far, till CC 2019 release, but I know half of users want it like it's now, so best is if these 2 kind of user groups could choose how they want 'shift' worked during their own session. I think that is possible by adding checkbox to preferences (even if that needed to restart Photoshop), don't you think so?

I can appreciate your perspective on this. And I can almost buy that if they change it in all the Adobe Suite at once, maybe we could get used to it. Kinda. But as someone else mentioned, it's a slippery slope now. So what if you draw a rectangle. Or a circe or a line. Do you also no longer hold shift? When you draw a rectangle in a layout program, you probably don't want it to be a perfect square. So now you have the opposite issue, you are holding shift to draw every diagonal line and rectangle. I dunno, this is such a legacy functionality, I would be curious to understand the research behind it and see why they thought this was a better option.

> So now you have the opposite issue, you are holding shift to draw every
diagonal line and rectangle. I dunno, this is such a legacy
functionality, I would be curious to understand the research behind it
and see why they thought this was a better option.>

This is a mess across all the apps and applications. There's no standard. No matter what Adobe does, they're wrong to a whole bunch of people. That's why they should have made it a toggle on the Options bar, or even a Preference, though toggle would let us adapt it freely whatever our workflow.

It isn't that "this" is right, or that "that" is wrong. It's that nothing is consistent everywhere, so don't force a false consistency on us, but let us choose the right behavior for us.

I would like to know on the basis of what research Mr. Giamanco makes this assertion. I want to assure you all that I am much older than 12 and I am not just a weekend user. I pay for Photoshop each month just like most of the rest of you. I can sympathize with those whose muscle memory has been messed up. However, I have become very weary of the many one sided comments.

Second, I was a KelbyOne member when Scott Kelby and a lot of his members, who are not professionals in either photography or graphic design, were giving Adobe all sorts of off the wall suggestions as to changes to the interface as well as other suggestions in regards to other tools in PS. Matter of fact, Adobe sends that community forum on Kelby's website surveys as to which tool should change and how without any regard toward professionals and how they use these tools. He bragged on The Grid episode when these features were launched about how his 12 year old is "now being able to use Photoshop better because of the free transform being changed". (Not sure why we have to dumb down 12 years olds). That episode is readily available, no re-search needed.

My point was that when major changes like this happen, those who depend on Photoshop to do their paid jobs, those who have a 4 year graphic design degree and work in the real world using Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign for 12+ hour a day, those should be asked and sent surveys as to what will make their lives easier, and not those who only use PS occasionally, for fun, and who don't pay their mortgages from working a daily graphic design or photography job.

It was called "FREE Transform" for a reason. I think Mr. Bert Monroy may be able to take us way back when PS first started and tell us all how "FREE Transform" became what it's been for the last 20 years. I can assure you this change did not come from someone such as Bert who is one of the first people to work and make Photoshop what it is today.

I have to use CC19 because in my work I use Content Aware Fill every day, and the new one is excellent. However, I never removed CC18, and for anything else I use CC18 now, because this Free Transform is really messing me up and is wasting my time.

James, were you someone who requested this change? If so why? Were you part of some Adobe Re-search for this tool? Why was this even in question to change? Why does this work for you? How long have you been using Photoshop? Why all of the sudden holding down shift has become a "too hard"? Just curious since you came back quoting my post even though my post wasn't addressing you directly. I still want to know who cheered on this feature being changed, why, and how long have they been using Photoshop as well as are they professionals or weekend users. Also, there is nothing wrong with being a weekend user, the problem starts when these random/part time users without deadlines make changes that affect those with daily deadlines. That's the problem.

Mrs. Giamanco, Sorry for the gender confusion. Thanks for the explanation about the use by 12 years olds. I am not personally a big fan of Scott Kelby, but that is a different subject. I happen to prefer the change to the free transform and have talked to others who agree. That does not change the fact that the change has annoyed many. I think that some go too far in their assumption that everybody but 12 year olds and occasional weekend users wanted it changed back the way it was. It would make much more sense for it to be a preference. I did not request this change. I have never been involved in Adobe research. I do not do free transform often enough to develop what some have fairly called "muscle memory". I presume the reason I prefer the new way is that most of the time when I use the tool I want to constrain proportions and more often than not I forget to hold another key down. To me holding down shift is not too hard and not holding down is not too hard. I have been using Photoshop for 22 years. I am sure I have not had anything to do with why Adobe made this change. I am not even sure why I have been reading every post on this thread. I am just weary of the "me too" one sidedness of the comments. I am not sure why I care. Just for the record I am lot older than 12. I am neither a weekend user nor a professional who makes a living working on Photoshop.

Well, when you freely admit that you don't use FT enough to develop automated muscle memory, that pretty much says it all. I often times use Free Transform a hundred times a day or more and not just for scaling. I use pretty much every modifier key that affects how the tool works and while the script fixes most of this crap, there's still the shortened "auto commit" distance which trips me up all the time. That's another muscle memory sort of thing they screwed with without asking. I'm still skeptical that they can get it right, especially when they quite apparently thought this ﻿was the right way to "transform" the program.

@Mr. Gray: No worries; just didn't want that to get perpetuated the wrong way.It is fine to not use the Free Transform, it's not a requirement to use it. I sort and crop in Lightroom too because I like to print, but when I work in Photoshop I use Free Transform on almost any graphic or image I edit/create, and since version 5, so this was a completely necessary move, and I hope Adobe restores the default to "FREE" Transform, and adds a check box on top somewhere, (or in the preferences), so that anyone who wishes to keep it constrained by default can without messing up our workflows.

Max there is a bug in the Maintain aspect ratio constrain link on the toolbar. It doesn't work. That needs to be addressed.

When you un-check the Maintain aspect ratio constrain link on the toolbar and then use transform it still maintains aspect ratio. . . un-checking the link should disable maintain aspect ratio shouldn't it? Well it doesn't.

Also shift key + transform disables Maintain aspect ratio but doesn't correspond with the constrain link on the tool bar.

I agree and I did mention that twice in my reply, though in-line with the other requests."...and the Maintain aspect ratio constrain link on the toolbar should function properly. " and "...fix the aspect-ratio button in the tool bar..."

Bug using the transform tool using CTRL+t. Bug 1: The default is always ON for the maintain proportions option. Clicking the "locl proportions" button doesnt seem to work . The default used to be OFF. Bug 2: SHIFT now does the opposite - it unlocks proportions while transforming.

This happens after selecting part of a layer where some pixels are drawn ( it doesnt matter how you select them), when you enter transform mode using CNTRL+t.

I first looked at the calender, this last update totally felt like the best April fools software prank ever intended. But no! It's a feature. Just forget your more than 10 years of experience! Throw aboard the fast way of working you are used to! Hey, you beloved power users out there, just shut up and make room for another classic "Adobe duh' move" where they pretend to know their people and try to sell us the most unintentional shiat possible - so everybody is raging about that, rather than the old and poor single core architecture of their software.

Adobe, you have all the eyes and ears in the world, why do you not just ask your community beforehand??? I can't understand software behemoths like this one... all they have to do is listen! What is this board good for anyways?!

Btw, there is a "back-to-legacy"-setting for every little thing BUT that one! WHY?

I read enough many theards from last 15 years on different forums about Adobe. Conclusion is they won't listen us about some stuff they want us to enforce to get used to. And that will happen for sure as they know majority of us has no choise and will use Photoshop the way that's beeing redesigned for making more money purpose.

This works like a charm in Affinity because they decided to constrain (logically) text AND photos. When I use photoshop to compose complexe pictures with shadows, lines and other shapes, all this suddenly becomes very tricky... For example, I had to manipulate large layers with black to transparent gradients, this has no sense to constrain this type of layer by default... -And for sure, a toggle button would be really usefull... I'm always very very happy to work with homothetic transformed text in Affinity Designer...

In a month or so you don't even remember that you had to hold that key down in the past.

Not true - me and many other users changed this new behaviour back to that how that was for over 20 years. So you'll have 2 group of users, and that would be best option to respect all.

That is not light or dark leading theme of Photoshop users set like they want. But if you allowed us to have even four colours Photoshop is adjusted to, then what is problem to do the same with that what 'shift' should do?

I'm scared of next AdobeMax! Everything looks so nice on there, but in practise that's something we wouldn't like to have. Like that was said. Focus on bugs they live from 5 - 10 years then try to implement some new features....

That's easy for them to do that they want. When we are not users they have to make something we will like, but after they got your money and enforced for subscription they don't have to listen us - we are already in cage. If there was must to buy next Ps before our money was on their account they would do everything to encourage us to buy their product. That had to be really good, like that was in Creative Suite times. There's no campaign in monarchy to make everything we chose their Photoshop release. We're stuck in their kingdom, and I even suspect previous versions of Ps are not fully fixed before next one is beeing released as that would make people to not upgrade to newest one. Such brutal politics.

I've been using Photoshop since it first came out. Using the Shift key to constrain proportions is one of the cornerstone key commands of the application. To arbitrarily switch to the opposite action, after nearly 3 decades, is unnecessary, illogical and completely tone-deaf to the core, long-time, loyal users.

I've lost a lot of billable work time to go back and recheck sizing of graphics, because of Adobe's shift to NOT constrain scaling update. So who may I send my invoice to at Adobe?

Change it back! I'm not able to justify this ridiculous hinderance of my workflow and I don't have time to get our IT department's approval to mess with the code of the Photoshop application.

After the new release (CC 20), scaling proportionally using the Shift key no longer works. When scaling you need to click "Maintain Aspect Ratio" button now, which is NOT good as some of the time you want to be able to transform freely and other times you want to keep the ratio - the Shift key was a nice feature that avoided having to hit that "Maintain Aspect Ratio" button every time you need to switch between free transform and keep ratio transform. PLEASE bring it back!!

And also when in the transform mode, the "center" is no longer visible. So when hitting the alt key to move the "rotation center" to another spot, it's no longer visible, so you don't know what you're rotating around...

I agree that Adobe really screwed this up. There is a way to get the reference point back in your transform box however. Go to Preferences>Tools> and click Show reference point when using transform. (Thanks to Jesús Ramirez at the Photoshop Training Channel on Youtube for that one by the way)

Though having a preference is usually a good thing, I still prefer having more exposed on the Options bar. I have a visual clue as to how I last "set" my preference, I can toggle it on and off, I am way less likely to think something is "broken" just because I've forgotten a preference.

So I wish Adobe would put more of those preferences on the Options bar. They gave us the narrow bar option, and that leaves plenty of room even with my laptop. If they'd do what others do and put all those align and distribute icons into a simple drop down with the icons, they'd even have a ton of room left over when the Move tool is active.

I want more prefs, not less, but having more of them in my workspace is better than having to hunt for them. I think the majority of users don't even look at their preferences, so it should be obvious by now that's a terrific backup, but more exposure for the ones we commonly need in a context-sensitive setting like the Options bar or even the Properties panel would be even better.

Following you I suggest something close to Properties panel like Preferences panel that we can customize to our needs to keep there only those preferences we're not sure / aware how they got set, or we often change (that would be too inconvinient to do that fastly by regular Preferences where we have to look for certain ones amongst all of them).

This new "feature" is completly stupid, if you change this kind of things, do it well. If you transform a vector layer it's still the default behavior, so when you're on the new keyboard shortcuts, you have to know if it's a pixelised layer, you don't hold shift to get proportional transform, and if you're on a vector, you have to hold shift... It drove me totally crasy. Not to mention that in all other Adobe apps, it's still holding shift that is the dafault behavior (illustrator, indesign, etc.) Thanks for the tip with PSUserconfig file, it worked nicely, and I'm back to mental sanity

Look at there are differences also between transformation of Smart Objects, Text Objects and also Path Objects. And you have good point. When we switch to someone's computer the only reseting preferences wouldn't be enough. Normally that is some shortcuts are popular so we could handle Photoshop with that we met, but when within one program there are 2 kinds of methods to do the same for similar actions you feel like sitting to car you knew how to drive is like you are in airplane that is new vechicle for you, you have to learn how to make if fly.

I completely agree with the ones who want the possibility to switch back to the previous defaults for proportional / non-proportional transform.Also the new "feature" auto-commit should have the option to switch back to the previous version: if I am transforming a selection with narrow opaque areas, if I click on it in order to drag it on the canvas, it’s very likely to click on a transparent pixel and to accidentally commit the transformation.It can be a problem if it was an unfinished complex transformation, as I need to undo it and to start again.

I agree, this is pure stupidity. Especially when the whole change is added so poorly. You never know which kind of layers does what. Select multiple layers, how will it scale?, vectors, smart objects, fonts, its impossible to get used to how anything behaves. And the amazing thing also is that it change only to a few types of layers, and ONLY in Photoshop. It's either all in or nothing for such a change...I mean who comes up with these ideas? And this was one of the marque features presented at Max 2018. Its not a feature! its just a Keyboard shortcut change for crying out loud, forced upon users! And one single Official response here, which ignores all kinds of arguments laid out and just explains it as new feature, end of discussion...wow...

Why to release new Photoshop if there is almost no new Photoshop inside? Because people are stupid and they think if something is fresh it's something special so they have to get it!

Adobe killed themselves with this different objects transformation feature. You said something important. If we want to transofrm multiple (different) objects at once how we know should we hold 'shift' or not? Loll the most funniest comedy I was 'watching' ever!

What is funny are people defending this SHIFT change. We used shift for decades and no one said anything. They change it and suddenly "my finger hurts from pressing shift" I am waiting to see what happens when they change the space bar for the hand tool.

I don't have time for new series, but thank you for recommendation. I see super heroes of the same universe can not any way beat Adobe - that is lately bad character as well - in their parrarel world ;)

Recall the preview in the former open dialogue. Ultimately, adobe blamed Microsoft, and yet left the preview in other applications. Now of course, they show a whole screen full of files in previously opened documents. Adobe his grown on the backs of its oil users, and simply doesn’t care.

Now that we seem to have a "fix" for this ridiculousness Adobe has foisted upon us, maybe we can move on and actually get work done. Everyone who's still complaining I urge you to do the PSUserConfig.txt fix listed below and move on. It fixes the crop tool too. Bonus. What I have NOT seen is any official acknowledgement on Adobe's part that they royally screwed this up. The ONLY thing I've seen from our esteemed product manager is to use a modifier key when pulling guides mid transform. If I were in charge of the Ps division, whoever was responsible for this mess would have been gone yesterday. But if I were in charge, it never would have happened.

I was so confident that Adobe would not ever make a change like this that I developed a method of creating a shadow if a layer like a person that could be quickly adjusted and placed anywhere you wanted. It is fast and beautiful.I paid over $400.00 to have it made into a Photoshop Script.It is dependent on being able to move the center point to an appropriate pivot position and use the top-center of the DISTORT box to move it where you want it.At the time, I didn't make it for sale. I did give it to a few people and now, if I want to sell it or give it away, I need 2 sets of instructions so people that want to use with the new version of Photoshop. Even that would be OK if there had been a good reason for the change.

Photoshop develeopers make their scripts for all releses starting by CS6 EXTENDED. Why if there is subscription letting us upgrade to newest release, so not like in Creative Suite times everyone got different Photoshop still? Because people don't want to have latest 'FREE' version as there is not only new stuff but often old removed or changed the way they don't like anymore.

We talk here of too small amount of money. I assume milion dollars were involved into new Ps that it could look the way as it is now. So why inconvenient for users? Probably because Macintosh paid Adobe huge sum to favour their own devices. It will make high sale of Apple products becuase their iPads(?) will be recognised as best to work with Photoshop.

Thanks for sharing this Dennis. I have not done this yet,as cc2019 is so full of other bugs on my iMac that I had to return to using 2018...but I definitely will use this when Adobe gets some of the bugs worked out.

Actually there are five posts in this theard about PSUserConfig.txt, and five more links to Adobe changes. But never too many when this discussion is still growing and new comers can't read it from beginning.

I have never had a reason to complain about Photoshop but Im wishing I would have kept my 2018 version until the bugs are worked out. The new command T transform options are not working as advertised, the image size options don't work half of the time, the save options don't work half of the time...as a matter of fact, almost every feature just is not working correctly. One feature or another is freezing up or not working in the middle of every project and is forcing me to restart the application.I honestly don't like the way the updated transform tool works and would like an option to return the tool to its previous form as well.

<<Im wishing I would have kept my 2018 version until the bugs are worked out. >>

You don't have to stick with 2019 if you don't want to. If you uninistalled 2018, open the ACC app, click on the down pointing arrow beside Open, choose Manage, then choose to install 2018. You don't even have to uninstall 2019 to do that. You can have both installed, with 2019 waiting for updates that match your needs.

I always keep the last version installed until I'm satisfied I won't have to return to it to run extensions, plug-ins, workaround bugs, etc.

Maybe the ONLY thing they got right is that now the upgrade install does not wipe your old versions by default, so unless you uninstalled it, the 2018 version should still be there. This is a huge deal. Can't tell you how many of my clients didn't realize they deleted not only their previous versions but also all of their third party plugins too. The second thing they got right - finally - is that all my previous settings, preferences, F-Key shortcuts - they all came over. This has never happened in the past. But back on 2018 until they get their act together.

Yes, the ACC app finally stopped deleting old versions by default. Notice they still didn't remove that "Advanced" section and expose the 2 choices you have under Advanced. Plenty of room to there to stop hiding them. The users who are least likely to be aware of what Advanced is for and think the "default" is as much as they need, are the very ones who need these options exposed the most. I don't know what they think hiding them under Advanced does for anyone.

But finally they learned how destructive it was for unwary users to uninstall by default.

But they hid access to previous versions under "Manage" because "older versions" or "previous versions" or something obvious like that was too confusing or something? <sigh>

I back installed to 2018 because of this. I'm curious who is making these requests that is changing features that are muscle memory for power users who've been using Photoshop for 20 plus years with no obvious way to revert the function.

I saw the PSUserConfig.txt file work-around, but I hope, at a minimum, Adobe adds to their preference file a way to undo the "updates" they've made.

My guess is that the "who" that is requesting these, uh, "refinements" is either Adobe themselves.

It has been suggested that this is to make interface consistent across platforms with iPads, iPhones etc, which lack shift keys, but that would leave them with no way to do unconstrained resizing, so if true, it's an even-dumber move.

By the way, after three weeks of use, auto-select text is also a big pain in the workflow... So here it is, I'm back to 2018. Can't stand this version that drives me mad... And I don't talk about graphic issues... Check those dumb issues... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTILAITOEC4

I looked at the video and duplicated his file (or think I did). It wasn't easy to see what I might have been doing that he wasn't, but I was unable to get it to replicate like that with everything I tried. It looked like he was just using zoom and pan. Cool "feature," if somewhat awkward in real life use.

I was thinking for a moment I was seeing Illustrator's ability to draw replicating versions of a geometric shape when you hold down the option/alt key as you drag it out.<G> So I was kinda hoping I could make it happen too. '-} On a Mac with High Sierra.

It was too much for me, I downgraded PhotoShop, Illustrator and InDesign. I have felt through all of this is that no one cares. So I have no more loyalty and will be keeping my eyes open for an alternative that can reduce my monthly cost because after 20 years+ of Adobe products switching products will as hard as learning the new update.

Like many, I have been a loyal Adobe user since Photoshop 2.I believe I owned every Suite and every upgrade.I presently have the "full-blown" Creative Cloud".This last round of changes, the obvious silence on the part of Adobe, the number of complaints and a new product on the market makes me look long and hard at "Why Stay With Adobe"?Affinity Photo and other products they make, look better every day. Affinity Photo is the first product and maybe the only product to be a real Photoshop look-a-like!While much of the interface looks like Photoshop, it does have a learning curve. I am going through that now. I've also asked my Daughter who is an Art Director to take a look. She says, for a big company like hers, such a change is difficult but not impossible.

Is there also a script to deactivate that always interfering Auto-commit of transforms by clicking in the canvas? This is even more annoying for me than the completely messed up integration of propoprtionals transform!

I'm a trained monkey. Every time I transform and want to rotate, too, I click in the wrong place, hit Cmd-T again, and try to be more careful. I'd complain, but I have been doing that since they ruined text for me by making click to commit, so I just sigh, sigh, sigh and repeat the process while trying hard not to be so aggravated over and over and over.

I'd go along with Auto-commit for text and transform if it only worked when you clicked on the interface, not the document. And it's not impossible to do. There's code that knows you've clicked on the interface, not on your image. Then it would be more convenient, instead of a major inconvenience.

What I find scary, is that there is no guarantee about Affinity. Once you start going deep and try to speed up workflow. Who knows what could happen?

If I am annoyed about this transform thing, certainly learning a entire new program is going to have it's curves. How effective can you be with brand new software? Can you trust it's technically efficient?

This was the worse mistake Adobe had made, ever. But they have a relatively decent track record. I think they have their tail between the legs on this one, and eventually they will revert back. I hope.

@Cristen GillespieHeres what I am not getting... is it that important to use v20 that you need to put up with all the aggravation?As soon as v20 aggravated me I dumped it.

I know sweat shops in India who do retouching still using pirated copies of CS6 and do darn good work... why would anyone need to put up with Adobe's insults to its long time users in favour of some old Kelby fogies and a ton of broke school kids on iPads.

Adobe is heading down the wrong road by pissing us off with bad software and they will find out much sooner than later.

For the near term or even the mid term, using older versions is fine. I mean, really, what are the real, useful differences between CC2018 and CC2019. Precious few of any consequence as far as I can tell, and some of the ones they really touted might work well on a web sized demo but are completely worthless on real world hi-res imagery. And there appears to be one more crappy bug I've run into now. The toggle on/off check in the Curves dialog simply does nothing at all now, at least when using an Fkey action to bring that dialog up, which also brings up the old old, much more desirable (IME) curves interface. You can still toggle the entire Adj Layer on and off but it ain't working right over here.

The longer Adobe goes without saying a thing, the worse it looks for them. But they've already got our money and that's all that really counts in the end.

Maybe this was their long term plan all along. Force everyone into a mandatory monthly payment, choke the life out of the program, then laugh all the way to the bank.

Thank you TangCanada! I’m in total agreement. I dumped v20 almost right away...not just because of the problem with the free transform tool and the horrible auto commit and type tool fiasco... but also due to the endless bugs it has. I honestly have to wonder why we would continue paying for a subscription when we can use pirated Adobe software that actually works ourselves.

I don’t encourage pirated software and wouldn’t use it myself. The point I am trying to make, however, is that if Adobe doesn’t care about their professional customers,why stay loyal to them? They won’t even provide us with a proper page to report bugs, but rather put up this blog for us to have a bitch-fest. I ended up on this blog under this subject simply because I wanted to report buggy behavior on the new v20, and had my comment merged tothis topic even though the “free” transform tool was a minor part of the subject.

Well, I spoke too soon! And now I'm so confused! When I use Distort, it works right. When I use Transform, it is still the same old problem.Today, I think that just about the time it looks like Adobe is getting their head on straight again, their head falls off!By the way, when you look at the long list of fixes an update like this addresses, you have got to wonder why. Our engineers would tell us that they can put a product on the market with at least 80% of the problems solved. The other 20% of the problems had to be identified by the end user.Many time we had to delay a release in order to reach that goal.

I keep trying to use the ruler and ruin my transforms. There are a lot of weird behaviors introduced with this transform.

I sound like an old man yelling at the clouds, but I can't help to feel that this new iPad, phone generation is just too lazy to hit shift. If I'm hiring, I would ask how you feel about the new transform and judge you by it.

I’ve been using PS since 1998, and this is literally the first time something changed within the interface that really messed up my workflow. I never once expected anyone at Adobe to screw with the Free Transform.

I've been using PS 2018 alongside PS 2019 but I've kept 2019 updated and since the 20.0.3, I must admit that there have been no other performance issues for me, other than the bothersome Free Transform/Constrain Link issue. I sometimes forget how the tool has changed but other than that all seems to be fine :)

Adobe had a reason to make a change. They still have that reason, so going "back" isn't likely to happen. Creating a new feature that offers the choice and flexibility we asked for in the first place is more likely what's going to happen, and creating a new feature without breaking half the rest of the program is obviously not something that gets done overnight.